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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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Newly acquired synthetic aperture radar data of the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site provides additional evidence that the two mountainous areas accessible by the South and West Portals remain viable, and could support future underground nuclear testing if there were to be a political decision to do so. The data also corroborates Kim Jong Un’s publicly reported statement that two tunnels of the site remain in good condition. In short, while Chinese seismological findings that the Mt. Mantap portion of the nuclear test site may no longer suitable for tests due to significant damage and deformation appear correct, claims that the entire site “is wrecked beyond repair” are wrong.
In February 2017, a top White House aide who was Trump's longtime personal bodyguard, along with the top lawyer at the Trump Organization and a third man, showed up at the office of Trump's New York doctor without notice and took all the president's medical records.
The incident, which Dr. Harold Bornstein described as a "raid," took place two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had prescribed a hair growth medicine for the president for years.
In an exclusive interview in his Park Avenue office, Bornstein told NBC News that he felt "raped, frightened and sad" when Keith Schiller and another "large man" came to his office to collect the president's records on the morning of Feb. 3, 2017. At the time, Schiller, who had long worked as Trump's bodyguard, was serving as director of Oval Office operations at the White House.
"They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes. It created a lot of chaos," Bornstein said, who described the incident as frightening.
President Trump's former top health official on Tuesday said the Republican tax law would raise the cost of health insurance for some Americans because it repealed a core provision of the Affordable Care Act.
Tom Price, Trump's first secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said people buying insurance on government-run marketplaces will face higher prices because the tax law repealed the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. The mandate had forced most Americans to have health coverage or face a financial penalty.
"There are many, and I’m one of them, who believes that that actually will harm the pool in the exchange market, because you’ll likely have individuals who are younger and healthier not participating in that market, and consequently, that drives up the cost for other folks within that market," Price said at the World Health Care Conference in Washington.
Price's comments are in line with predictions from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which in November https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/14/why-repealing-obamacares-individual-mandate-is-so-crucial-for-tax-reform/?utm_term=.86dafc1a6dc4 (projected) 13 million fewer Americans would have health insurance by 2027 due to the elimination of the individual mandate. The CBO also said average premiums in the exchanges would increase by about 10 percent in most years over the next decade, compared with a scenario in which the mandate had been left in place.
THE BEGINNING OF May marks the longest period of public silence from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team since his first charges last October—more than two months without any new plea deals, fresh indictments, or publicly “flipped” witnesses.
At the same time, though, it’s been a period of aggressive moves that continue to illustrate an investigation that is far from complete, including the raid by federal prosecutors on Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s office, court evidence that shows Mueller’s team successfully sought permission to expand the scope of the probe, the release of former FBI director James Comey’s memos documenting his interactions with the president, continual hints that the special counsel is probing the UAE, the odd meeting by Blackwater founder Erik Prince in the Seychelles, and numerous other aspects of the complex, multi-part investigation.
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Mueller’s proposed questions are primarily high-level—presumably the starting point for what would then be increasingly detailed follow-ups, backed up by specific emails, documents, telephone records, and other files Mueller’s team and FBI investigators have accumulated in an investigation stretching back more than two years. While the initial 49 questions are intriguing on their own, they primarily line up with what’s publicly known about the investigation so far. There’s nothing out of left field. Thus, the real mystery is the follow-ups: Why, precisely, is Mueller interested?
Taken as a whole, the leaked questions help shape and underscore some key takeaways:
1. Mueller always knows more than we think. ...
2. Mueller’s building a bulletproof case. ...
3. There are more loose threads than ever. ...
4. We still don’t know the biggest, most important evidence. ...
5. Mueller likely already knows how this story ends. Add up the four above points and it seems clear that Mueller might actually be relatively close to wrapping up the investigation. Given that the FBI raid on Michael Cohen’s office, stemming from an investigation by federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, was sure to provoke a reaction from President Trump—the investigative equivalent of kicking a hornet’s nest—it seems likely that Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who approved the raid, understood that one or both of them might be fired by the president in its wake. It seems likely that before they took such a provocative step on the case that they could see their way through to the investigation's end.
What do special counsel Robert Mueller’s 49 questions for President Donald Trump tell us about the state of the investigations into possible obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and Russian “collusion”?
1. Big picture: What do Mueller’s questions indicate about the state of the special counsel’s investigations?
First, Mueller’s questions about collusion show that it is likely that Mueller has already identified crimes involving collusion–such as a conspiracy to defraud the United States through an evasion of the Federal Election Commission–and Mueller is asking here only about Trump’s possible knowledge and personal involvement. In other words, the questions indicate that there is a “there, there.” That said, we want to be cautious here. We are only identifying this as a likely scenario, though not necessarily one that is certain.
There are possible alternative explanations. It may be, for instance, that the special counsel’s office, in an effort to be comprehensive and show no stone was left unturned, would ask Trump, as a subject of the investigation, a series of questions before terminating the investigation. As an example, James Comey writes in A Higher Loyalty that with respect to the Hillary Clinton email investigation, he knew already by early 2016 that it would not likely produce a prosecutable case but that he insisted on pursuing all reasonable leads, including conducting an interview of Hillary Clinton three days before announcing on July 5 that the FBI would not recommend charges. That’s not unusual.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team has given President Trump a list of questions for an interview, and the president—should he agree to sit for questioning—is in for the toughest exam of his life. By providing the president’s legal team with advance notice of these questions, Mueller has made clear that he has no interest in a game of “gotcha.” Instead, his investigators have prepared a fair interview for the president that includes simple, direct questions about his words and deeds.
The trouble for Trump and his legal team is that the president will place himself in even greater legal jeopardy unless his answers to these questions are both innocent and true.
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But nothing Trump does is normal, and we cannot rule out his taking the Fifth. The effect might be to increase the risk that Mueller names the president as an unindicted co-conspirator, or even indicts him. While current Justice Department policy suggests that a sitting president cannot be indicted, the department has never addressed these extraordinary circumstances, and the special counsel might ask the department to change its position. Failing that, a Fifth Amendment assertion could be devastating to the president when taken together with the substantial evidence of obstruction likely to be set forth in the report Mueller is said to be preparing for Congress. As an elected official, Trump must answer to that body and to voters, who will be left to draw negative inferences from the questions he declines to answer on self-incrimination grounds.
The idea that no person is above the law is central to our republic. The president enjoys no special immunity from accountability for interfering with our system of justice or the sanctity of our electoral process. Instead, like any other subject of an investigation, Trump is entitled to a fair and evenhanded evaluation of his conduct. Mueller’s questions indicate that he is getting just that. If providing truthful answers to those questions does not set the president free from further scrutiny, he has only himself to blame.
Kanye West just told the TMZ newsroom why he believes slavery is a choice and why he decided to sport his "Make America Great Again" hat ... and it all went down Tuesday morning on "TMZ Live."
The New York Times obtained a copy of the questions special counsel Robert Mueller submitted to President Trump's lawyers and among them was this subtle bombshell: "What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?"
Why it matters: The old saw is that good lawyers don't ask questions they don't know the answers to. The phrasing — outreach to Russia rather than outreach from — suggests Mueller may have reason to believe the Trump campaign requested Russian assistance in the campaign.
Manafort started with the Trump campaign in March of 2016. In April, the believed Russian hackers registered the DC Leaks website, a WikiLeaks clone that appears to be the original plan for releasing hacked emails before the group pivoted to Wikileaks. That summer, the Democratic National Committee would announce it had been hacked.
- Yes, but: The DNC hackers had already burrowed into the DNC network before Manafort joined the campaign, and the question certainly doesn't imply this was Manafort's first move as campaign manager. Reaching out does not mean a Russian plan was already in the works.
- Of an anti-Trump website, Trump Jr. wrote in an email released by Congress: "Guys I got a weird Twitter DM from [W]ikileaks. See below. I tried the password and it works and the about section they reference contains the next pic in terms of who is behind it."
- Kerr is a leading expert in what the CFAA means and should mean, and has taken a narrower view than some judges about what kinds of activities the law forbids. But he has argued that the CFAA should be taken to ban illicit access to a computer beyond any measures intended to cut off access — like a password prompt.
Winning ...
